August 31st, 2007 Scott
I arrived at the housing agency at 2:30 PM as arranged, we got into a van and drove off. Except that we were going the wrong way from what we had discussed the previous day. She told me something had just opened up that afternoon. All the other agents had appointments for later in the day at this new listing and she said it wouldn’t last past today. When we got there, I could see why. Although it isn’t as posh as yesterday’s viewings, it is nice enough. The big sell though is the view and the deck. I think the video will speak for itself:
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August 30th, 2007 Scott
Today was the first day of house hunting, and as all things here, it was an adventure. All around Kadena Air Base there are housing agencies that specialize in finding homes for those of us here working on the base. It is a very lucrative market because the US government pays all of us a housing stipend if we choose to live off base. This stipend varies by rank, and your rank is one of the first questions you are asked so that they can show you homes/apartments/duplexes in that price range (or if you are cynical, so they can jack the price of everything they show up to match that stipend).
I picked an agency that was recommended to me through Tim’s wife. I showed up today and after a few basic questions, we were set to go look at a couple of properties. However, there seemed to be an issue of some kind between the lady helping me and another woman in the office. Finally, and very embarrassed, my agent asked me if we could use my car. She was mortified to be asking and made it clear that it was her colleague’s idea. I didn’t mind at all, but I wanted her to drive. She did drive.
The purpose of the trip was to look at housing, and we did, but I also felt incredibly lucky to get about 90 minutes of Japanese Culture instruction. She was curious about certain aspects of America, as well as some questions about English (she can speak English, but haltingly so). In the process I asked her many questions about Okinawa culture (she was born on a nearby island and raised here). It was a fantastic lesson! But I need to show you the apartments we looked at; I’ll discuss the culture lesson later.
My pay grade allows me a monthly rent of 300,000 – 350,000 yen. That translates into a $3600 per month stipend for rent and utilities (Did I thank all of you for paying your taxes yet?). Remember that this is separate from my base pay (comparable to Washington state teacher’s salary) and my 25% cost of leaving adjustment. So, here are pictures of the first place. It is a brand new apartment building and nobody has moved in yet. I conservatively estimate that a three bedroom condo on the river in Wenatchee this size and finished to this quality would cost in excess of $500,000 to purchase. In Seattle, more like $2,000,000. I was in awe…
I really don’t think the pictures do it justice. It is a beautiful place that Frazier Crane would be proud to call home. That view is out the deck of the living room and monster master bedroom. The sliding class doors open up the entire wall to that view. The walk-in closet in the master bedroom is bigger than our bathroom I just remodeled back in Wenatchee.
It’s beautiful, and it’s out of the city, but that means it’s a 20 – 40 minute commute to work depending on the traffic. The other brand new option, almost as big and also with a nice view, is only 5 minutes from my job. However, that means it’s in the core of urban city life. It’s a trade off we’ll have to figure out. Here are pictures of that apartment:
The last picture gives you an idea how dense the buildings are here in the city area, but you can still see the ocean beyond the golf course driving range in the first picture
Tomorrow I’m going to check out some units on the east side of the island in a rural area. However, the expressway is on that side which would speed up the commute while still allowing for the more rural living space. We’ll see what it looks like.
As for the culture lesson, I tried some of my Japanese I’ve learned with her and she was very kind and thought I was doing well. that’ll give me more confidence to try speaking it more in public instead of acting like a mute. We also talked about the Okiniwan’s sense of belonging to the Japan mainland. She said that they want to be like mainlanders and treated with the same respect, but at the same time consider themselves not Japanese. She said that an Okinawan wouldn’t consider being called Japanese rude, just not quite accurate. I suppose it might be like calling a Waterville wheat farmer a yuppie. Not accurate, but not rude either.
It’s 7:00 PM here and I haven’t eaten dinner yet. More to come tomorrow…
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August 29th, 2007 Scott
In November, there is a UCI single day road race called "Tour de Okinawa". It used to be a 6 stage race, but is now just a single day. This race also has several amatuer divisions including a new one this year for men over 35 years old. We’d call that the Masters division back home, but here I think they think we are really over the hill. We only race 50km on a flat course, the same as the JH aged kids. There are races of 180km for the young guns. At any rate, my on-line application process didn’t work due to the content filter at school, then the race filled up so I emailed asking to get in and they let me in! However, the PDF to print and snail mail wouldn’t work either, so I just scheduled an appointment to go to their office and register in person.
That shouldn’t be too tough; it is just an island, right? Well, I live in Kadena, and the race office is in Nago; about 45km (27 miles) north on a major highway. Well, I made it just fine, but nothing happens quickly around here when traveling. It took me 75 minutes to go that 27 miles, and traffic wasn’t that bad. There were a lot of stop lights, and the fastest you can go is about 40 mph (but you rarely get to that speed due to stop lights and other cars).
The cool part is that the road travels most of the way on the west coast of the island right through the resort region. I felt like I was cruizing the beaches of Hawaii. I must’ve past 15 – 20 public beaches and 5 – 10 huge destination resorts. I didn’t get any pictures, it was challenging enough just driving through the scenery. I hadn’t been outside of dense city until today. The countryside is magnificent. If I could find a place to live somewhere out there that doesn’t take an hour to commute to work, that’d be the way to go. It was stunning.
Tomorrow I have an appointment to look at a house to rent. I’ll get pictures to share; it should be interesting. The government pays for your housing and utilities if you life off base (that’s on top of the 25% cost of living increase to my base pay). Your stipend for housing is based on your military rank. Teachers fall right in the middle of the range, and your years of experience bumps you up the system a bit. Needless to say, the max is an ample amount of money to find a very, very nice place to live. All the housing agents here will ask you your rank first thing and then the rent happens to be exactly what your allawance is. What a coindcidence!
On the way home I stopped at a "Family Mart". This is the Okinawan version of 7-Eleven. I felt very un-Okinawan while shopping and getting out a camera to take pictures would’ve been over the top (imagine a Japanese tourist taking pictures of the Big Gulp machine while you buy your chili cheese nachos…yeah…it’d be a little weird). It was just like a 7-Eleven, except cleaner and I didn’t recognize a single item for sale there. I went in to get some sushi; Id heard that they sold it there. I picked some up, but they even had some mystery fried greasy food that would have been popcorn chicken and taquitos if I were back int he states. Here? I haven’t the faintest idea what it was; maybe fried soybean curd? Who knows, but I felt like I was in a parallel universe. It would be even more freaky if the store was called Eleven-7, or maybe 6-Twelve.
The sushi was good, but way more expensive that the Sushi-go-round, and the shrimp didn’t go all the way through; it was only on the cut ends. It was about $3.20 for five large rolls. It would’ve been half that at the sushi-go-round.
I’ve found a great on-line resources for learning Japanese,
www.japanesepod101.com. It’s very well designed, but Japanese is going to be a challenge to learn. The structure and context is so different than English, or a romance language.
Time to wrap up. I hope to get out more for the three day weekend and treat you with the videos and photos of what I find.
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August 27th, 2007 Scott
First day of school. Yee hah!
Today I had three sections of class piano, each one ninety minutes long. Tomorrow, I’ll have my two band classes and something called seminar. Those of us in our 30′s or older would know that as study hall. Things went well, the kids are as meek as lambs the first day. It’ll take a while for the reality to set in after the newness of learning piano as a class wears off. No worries. It was fun today.
At lunch, Tim had a surprise for me: my bike! It left on Saturday, August 18th and arrived here today on the 27th. That’s absolutely amazing that it got here that fast. The kicker is that it only cost about $60 to ship. Rocky did a great job of packing it for me and everything arrived just fine, even though one of the wheel quick releases was sticking out the side of the cardboard box. Getting the box into my new sub-compact japanese car was a little tricky, but it went in.
So, after coming home and eating too many cookies, I put the bike together and went for a ride. I live in the Hamagawa lodge right at the intersection of Highway 23 and 58.
Here it is in google maps, althought I couldn’t figure out how to mark it, it is the exact center of the map. At any rate, I headed west to get to the coast and thought I ride north up the coast for a while. I immediately came to what is known as the "sea wall". There are dive shops every fifty feet and a cool sidewalk on top of the wall that’s right on the water. Apparently it is very good diving with a great reef just 50 feet out in the water. I saw several divers in the water; you might be able to see them in the picture.
I continued up the coast and ran out of road so I turned inland and went north on Highway 58 until I could go west again. Highway 58 is a six lane highway, but with lots of lights. I could travel faster than the traffic most of the time, except for one half mile stretch without lights and the traffic got all the way up to 40 mph for a while. I turned left on Highway 16 and followed dwindling roads until I thought I had reached a dead end. At the last instant, it turned into a public beach called Tamaguchi beach (I haven’t checked that spelling yet). I was in awe. The pictures might do it some justice.
There are apartments right on the beach and many Americans live there. I big playground for kids, hiking trails in the trees. It was glorious. BTW, here is a shot of the vending machines around here. Notice they are just in the middle of nowhere. You see them like that all over the place.
It felt good to get back out on the bike again. Hopfully I’ll find some roads that aren’t so
stop and go and can get into a groove. Enjoy the beach; I know I’m going back for the next good sunset there. My house hunting will include that neighborhood as well.
Here is the beach in google maps.
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August 26th, 2007 Scott
Once again, another full work day in the room. I feel like I’ve got about 60% of the cleaning and purging out of date material finished and I’m ready for students tomorrow. I have to check out instruments to most of them, which will take the bulk of the first day; but I hope to play before we run out of time.
I actually considered taking the afternoon off and exploring off base. Then it hit me that I don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet, but I’m going to need some scenery other than my apartment and my classroom soon or I’m going to go stir crazy.
Virginia had some questions for me; I’ll answer them here.
Did you get your Military ID yet?
Yes, on Thursday afternoon. I was third in line and it took about one and a half hours for those people to get their issues resolved and then I got my ID. Yeah!
You said that you are getting used to driving on the left side. What is it like. Does it make you more alert?
I have to be vigilent to remember what to do. Occasionally at an intersection by myself, I find myself turning into the right lane. Also, I find I tend to drift to the far left of my lane while travelling down the road. I think that is because I’m not used to being so near the right side of a lane while driving and naturally move toward the left to put myself in the lane where it ‘looks’ more correct.
How is the base bureaucracy compared with the normal public school in WA bureaucracy?
This is a loaded question. I knew going in that the magnitude of the bureaucracy would be huge relative to state government. I also know that there is much that I still don’t know. That being said, the masses of paperwork dealing with personel concerns is absolutely staggering. TSP, LQA, TQSA, COLA, RAT, & many other acronyms I can’t even remember all have to do with the entitlements of being a DoDEA employee. As far as the school goes, it operates in much the same way as any other school. Unfortunately, they are under a severe budget crunch because of cutbacks the last three years due to the events in Iraq.
What are the other teachers like and where are they from?
This question is fun to answer. By it’s very nature, working for the DoDEA is going to attract some characters. At the same time, there are folks who’ve been in the system for so long that they are really out of touch with the difficulties of teaching in a true public school. In essence, these schools have very similiar student profiles to private schools back in the states in that the students’ famiiesy have a certain level of income and stability or they wouldn’t be here. So we have some very unique chararcters from all reaches of the states as well as some who should probably just walk away. Many bases, and their schools, closed in Europe this last year and we have a number of teachers who are new to Okinawa, but are veteran DoDDS teachers (DoDDS is Department of Defense Dependents Schools).
I will be interested in hearing about your students throughout the year.
I’ve meet some seniors who came in to help me a couple of days ago and I met some incoming freshmen yesterday. The seniors are cautiously optimistic but reserving themselves until they get to know me. I hope the tranistion goes well for both of us. My freshmen were very eager and excited to get started. I think the transition will be much easier with them. Their middle school band director is very much like me so I think those students will be comfortable right away.
First day with students tomorrow!
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August 25th, 2007 Scott
I went into work on a Saturday and spent about 10 hours in my room prepping by writing some syllabi, arranging furniture, and going through years of accumulation to clean up stacks of stuff. I feel like I could make it through the first couple of days now, but I still have much work left to be really ready.
Driving on the left side of the road is becoming a little more natural, but today it rained. It’s rained a little bit on several days that I’ve been here, but today, it RAINED. It was an epic downpour like we get in Wenatchee in the midst of a summer thunderstorm, except this was just rain. No wind, no lightening, just torrents of water. It helped cool things down a bit to the upper 70′s, but still incredibly humid.
I suspect that there are folks out there reading this, but I’ve not gotten much feedback yet. Post comments or send me email. Ask me questions. Let me know what you want to know about living in Okinawa and teaching military children how to play instruments. There are so many details I could blog about, I’m not sure what is best to share with you.
If work goes well tomorrow, I might go for a drive and explore the island a bit. While it is possible to get around without knowing any japanese, I think it would be much better if I could say a few simple words. I’m goning to look into some learning systems. I also need to think about looking for a house, but I found out today that I have to get my extensive instrument stores inventoried by the end of the week. That is a new monster project put on the table just as I thought I was getting control over things. So it goes.
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August 24th, 2007 Scott
Dawn told me via email last night that "you must be busy, it’s been a while since you’ve updated your blog". I didn’t realize just how long it’s been until I sat down to work on it tonight. Four days! Yes, I have been very busy. Today was the first real day I was able to think about preparing for my teaching job. So here’s the update:
Tuesday, August 21
This was the first official reporting day for ‘new’ teachers. It consisted of an all morning meeting with Human Resources folk filling out a mass of paperwork. Unfortunately though, the briefing and subsequent testing for getting a driver’s license only occurs on Tuesday mornings at 9:00 AM. My principal okayed me to leave my HR brief and take care of it, but the HR folk didn’t see it that way. Ultimately, my principal came in and got me so I could get my license then rather than miss some school on some other Tuesday. Getting the ‘Profesional Driver’s License’ consistanted of watching a presentation from a japanese policeman (via translator) that summarized the facts that most of the accidents on Okinawa involve Americans. Then, we had a brief from someone in the licensing office about a few of the rules about driving here (like ‘drive on the left side of the ride’). Following that brief was a 20 question test that you couldn’t fail unless you wer really, really not paying attention.
TIME OUT…I forgot mention that I still didn’t have a military ID card yet. It is virtually impossible to do ANYTHING on base without this card. I had tried to get it the previous day, but I arrived on the island so fast that I wasn’t even in the system yet so they couldn’t issue me a card. So, getting my test done without this card was a small miracle.
After getting my test corrected, I needed to wait until after 12:00 PM to go to another facility to get my license. In the mean time, I went back to school to catch the remainder of my HR brief. At the facility that issues licenses, we had to really talk smooth to convince the Airman behind the desk that it was okay to issue me a license without my Military ID card. After several minutes and a discussion with her supervisor, we ultimately had a license. Next, I had another meeting in the afternoon with the superintendent of the district where we received many details about the make up of the Okinawa school district. We have 12 schools, 2 HS, 2 MS, 1 IS, and 7 elementaries. They are currently building another MS to open next school year. I made it to the bank and opened an account and also have a PO Box (remember, again, without my Military ID — not easily done and not the recomended way to do these things)
Wednesday, August 22
The first work day for all teachers. This morning was spent in building level meetings. For you teacher folks out there, these meetings were just like you can imagine. There’s always too much discussion about the parking lot making 45 minutes of important information get drawn out to over two hours. You know what I mean…After this meeting, I looked at a car on the ‘lemon lot’ to purchase. This lot is where base personal go to sell their cars. Usually, they are very inexpensive because the people are shipping out on orders (known as PCSing around here). I agreed to purchase a 1998 Nissan March with 102,000 km for $1700. A Mini looks big next to this car. There’s a picture in the photos section. I spent the afternoon in my room discovering what is there. I have great percussion equipment, great concert band music library, great jazz band library, and great inventory of instruments and PA gear (including a 24 channel digital recording station). Unfortunately, it needs a solid week of cleaning and organizing to get ready for rehearsals, but I don’t have that much time (and I still need to buy a car, get an ID, and figure out where to live). I checked into my temporary housing on this day. It’s called the Hamagawa and it is a hotel of sorts, but I have a stove, refridgerator, and a microwave. It turns out that this will be my home until I find a place off base or until Gina gets here if I want on base. I can’t live alone on base because my orders say I am ‘accompanied’. However, I can get my base housing because my dependent (Gina), isn’t arriving until November 30th. So, I’m caught in the middle as far as base housing is concerned. We can get a much nicer place off base, but our dog will need to stay on base until Febrary or so because of the 180 quarantine period required by the Japanese government. Japan is a rabies free country and the want to keep it that way. I rode a borowed bicycle from school to Hamagawa. It wasn’t a bad ride; mostly downhill and I had good sidewalks on the busy streets.
Thursday, August 23
Rode the bike to school and made it through the gate using my orders and my passport (did I mention you can’t hardly do ANYTHING without a Military ID?). We had an all district secondary level briefing on this morning covering terrorism, child abuse, and a few other items that were mandatory briefs. After that, our building went bowling for a team building excercise. We basicaly had the whole bowling alley to ourselves. We had a great time. I highly encourage it as a team building activity. After bowling, we went to the title transfer office to complete purchase of the car I made an offer on the previous night. Again, the lack of an ID created issues but Tim did a great job of smiling and saying the right things to smooth everything over, then we had to go to the insurance office and repeat the process there. Again, issues due to the lack of a military ID, but an hour later we had the deal done. I am a car owner! Next, a trip out to Torii station, an army installation to the north and west of Kadena AFB, to visit with DODDS HR department and get everything covered that I missed when I was getting my license test done earlier in the week. This meeting went very well, and we found out that the ‘system’ finally caught up with me so I could get the coveted Military ID. At another building and two hours of waiting, I finally had the ID. So, what we thought would be done by 2:00 PM, actually took til 5:30 PM and I was too fried to think about school work by then. I did go shopping at the commisary, which is base speak for grocery store. It’s fairly large and has a good selection of typical American groceries, but interestingly enough, many of the items are actually cheaper than they were back in Wenatchee. Quite a pleasant surprise. I have to make sure I always have some singles with me though. The baggers work for tips only and you are not allowed to take the carts out yourself. Typical tip is 1 – 3 bucks.
Friday, August 24
One more meeting and a training on the gradebook started the day. I passed on the gradebook training because I already checked it out and wanted to get in my room. I spent the rest of the day there, had three students come in and help arrange the room for me a bit and I feel like the room is almost ready to go for Monday. Now I just need to get ready for my Class Piano sections. I teach 3 sections of piano on Monday, then 2 sections of band on Tuesday. This A/B schedule then continues for the rest of the year. Check out pictures from the deck of Tim’s house, and pictures of my temporary quarters. See those trees on my deck? I’m on the fifth floor. Each deck has trees growing on the edge of it. Crazy.
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August 20th, 2007 Scott
Well, today I had the following goals:
Get a Military ID Card
Get a Driver’s License
Get a PO Box
Get a Cell Phone
Get a Car
I achieved:
Get a Cell Phone
Not a very good percentage, but I did get to check out my new band room. It has windows! I haven’t had a room with windows in it since 1997. Teaching in a cave for someone who loves the outdoors isn’t healthy. I’m going to put my desk right next to a floor to ceiling window. This is a good thing.
I bought a cell phone and signed two contracts that are completely written in Japanese. I hope that they say what she said they say. We’ll find out when I get my first bill.
I ate lunch at a "Sushi-Go-Round" today. Really, that’s what it’s called. Check out the video and you’ll see why.
Tomorrow starts my first official workday consisting of many, many meetings. I’m going to make another attempt at getting an ID card and also take my written driving test if all goes well. I’m told it isn’t too difficult.
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August 20th, 2007 Scott
After an eventful flight from Tokyo that was about three hours, I arrived to a dark and soggy Naha International Airport at 8:30 PM local time, and both my bags made it with me! Check out the shisha (a lion-dog) guarding the baggage claim carousel, this is something I learned a little more about this morning (I’m blogging the next morning after a bit of sleep).
Tim Black, my choir director partner at Kadena HS, and Jeff Arrington, my new principal, met me at the airport and tried to wake me up (not very successfully). Here’s my cheesy picture with the sign they held up for me to find them.
Today is paperwork day. Hopefully, a car, a place to live, a paycheck, a cell phone, and whatever else I’ve forgotten by the end of the day.
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August 19th, 2007 Scott
Well, after 10 hours in a plane with way too many other people, we finally were released to get lost in Tokyo International. Now as I sit here blogging, I’ve finally found my gate, but it took more effort than I thought it would. Fortunately, the declarations officer pointed out to me to pick up my baggage and then recheck it for my connecting flight into Okinawa. That would’ve been a drag to lose that baggage. Then, I was told to go to Gate C for my connection. I found a great many different large objects labeled "C", and it turns out none of them were my gate. While there are lots of sign around in English, I missed the small detail that put me into the ‘International Departures" terminal instead of the "domestic departures" terminal. Hidden away in a small corner of the airport is a little stairway that leads to a terminal barely bigger than Wenatchee’s. This is the gate "C" that she was talking about.
No worries. I had lots of time and made it. The two different information desks that I asked for help were incredibly polite; something about politeness and properness that intensifies in translation as opposed to getting lost in translation.
It’s in the 90′s here; both temperature and humidity. I think the airport has AC, but the humidity is still high and my clothes are drenched even though I really don’t feel hot.
I just called Gina using Skype for the first time. Worked pretty well, but we did get dropped. It’s 4:00 PM here and 12:00 midnight back in Washington. I’ve been up for 20 hours and I haven’t seen the sun set yet today. Talk about a long day.
We rode a Boeing 777 from Seattle to Tokyo. Three years ago, Gina and I rode an Airbus A340 on it’s first commercial flight from Detroit to Paris. I know I should root for the home town airplane manufacturer, but the Airbus blows the 777 away for comfort and amenities (in coach anyway…if someone wants to sponsor me in a first class comparison, give me a call). All in all, it wasn’t too miserable for a 10 hour flight, but I’m glad it’s over.
I’m checking out. I’ll give another update and some photos when I get to Naha (the city I fly into on Okinawa).
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